Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold Part 4

Yes; constantly in reading poetry, a sense for the best, the really excellent, and of the strength and joy to be drawn from it, should be present in our minds and should govern our estimate of what we read. But this real estimate, the only true one, is liable to be superseded, if we are not watchful, by two other kinds of estimate, the historic estimate and the personal estimate, both of which are fallacious. A poet or a poem may count to us historically, they may count to us on grounds personal to ourselves, and they may count to us really. They may count to us historically. The course of development of a nation's language, thought, and poetry, is profoundly interesting; and by regarding a poet's work as a stage in this course of development we may easily bring ourselves to make it of more importance as poetry than in itself it really is, we may come to use a language of quite exaggerated praise in criticising it; in short, to over-rate it. So arises in our poetic judgments the fallacy caused by the estimate which we may call historic.

Then, again, a poet or a poem may count to us on grounds personal to ourselves. Our personal affinities, likings, and circ.u.mstances, have great power to sway our estimate of this or that poet's work, and to make us attach more importance to it as poetry than in itself it really possesses, because to us it is, or has been, of high importance. Here also we over-rate the object of our interest, and apply to it a language of praise which is quite exaggerated. And thus we get the source of a second fallacy in our poetic judgments--the fallacy caused by an estimate which we may call personal.

Both fallacies are natural. It is evident how naturally the study of the history and development of a poetry may incline a man to pause over reputations and works once conspicuous but now obscure, and to quarrel with a careless public for skipping, in obedience to mere tradition and habit, from one famous name or work in its national poetry to another, ignorant of what it misses, and of the reason for keeping what it keeps, and of the whole process of growth in its poetry. The French have become diligent students of their own early poetry, which they long neglected; the study makes many of them dissatisfied with their so-called cla.s.sical poetry, the court-tragedy of the seventeenth century, a poetry which Pellisson[68] long ago reproached with its want of the true poetic stamp, with its _politesse sterile et rampante?_[69] but which nevertheless has reigned in France as absolutely as if it had been the perfection of cla.s.sical poetry indeed. The dissatisfaction is natural; yet a lively and accomplished critic, M. Charles d'Hericault,[70] the editor of Clement Marot, goes too far when he says that "the cloud of glory playing round a cla.s.sic is a mist as dangerous to the future of a literature as it is intolerable for the purposes of history." "It hinders," he goes on, "it hinders us from seeing more than one single point, the culminating and exceptional point, the summary, fict.i.tious and arbitrary, of a thought and of a work. It subst.i.tutes a halo for a physiognomy, it puts a statue where there was once a man, and hiding from us all trace of the labor, the attempts, the weaknesses, the failures, it claims not study but veneration; it does not show us how the thing is done, it imposes upon us a model. Above all, for the historian this creation of cla.s.sic personages is inadmissible; for it withdraws the poet from his time, from his proper life, it breaks historical relations.h.i.+ps, it blinds criticism by conventional admiration, and renders the investigation of literary origins unacceptable. It gives us a human personage no longer, but a G.o.d seated immovable amidst His perfect work, like Jupiter on Olympus; and hardly will it be possible for the young student, to whom such work is exhibited at such a distance from him, to believe that it did not issue ready made from that divine head."

All this is brilliantly and tellingly said, but we must plead for a distinction. Everything depends on the reality of a poet's cla.s.sic character. If he is a dubious cla.s.sic, let us sift him; if he is a false cla.s.sic, let us explode him. But if he is a real cla.s.sic, if his work belongs to the cla.s.s of the very best (for this is the true and right meaning of the word _cla.s.sic, cla.s.sical_), then the great thing for us is to feel and enjoy his work as deeply as ever we can, and to appreciate the wide difference between it and all work which has not the same high character. This is what is salutary, this is what is formative; this is the great benefit to be got from the study of poetry.

Everything which interferes with it, which hinders it, is injurious.

True, we must read our cla.s.sic with open eyes, and not with eyes blinded with superst.i.tion; we must perceive when his work comes short, when it drops out of the cla.s.s of the very best, and we must rate it, in such cases, at its proper value. But the use of this negative criticism is not in itself, it is entirely in its enabling us to have a clearer sense and a deeper enjoyment of what is truly excellent. To trace the labor, the attempts, the weaknesses, the failures of a genuine cla.s.sic, to acquaint oneself with his time and his life and his historical relations.h.i.+ps, is mere literary dilettantism unless it has that clear sense and deeper enjoyment for its end. It may be said that the more we know about a cla.s.sic the better we shall enjoy him; and, if we lived as long as Methuselah and had all of us heads of perfect clearness and wills of perfect steadfastness, this might be true in fact as it is plausible in theory. But the case here is much the same as the case with the Greek and Latin studies of our schoolboys. The elaborate philological groundwork which we requite them to lay is in theory an admirable preparation for appreciating the Greek and Latin authors worthily. The more thoroughly we lay the groundwork, the better we shall be able, it may be said, to enjoy the authors. True, if time were not so short, and schoolboys' wits not so soon tired and their power of attention exhausted; only, as it is, the elaborate philological preparation goes on, but the authors are little known and less enjoyed.

So with the investigator of "historic origins" in poetry. He ought to enjoy the true cla.s.sic all the better for his investigations; he often is distracted from the enjoyment of the best, and with the less good he overbusies himself, and is p.r.o.ne to over-rate it in proportion to the trouble which it has cost him.

The idea of tracing historic origins and historical relations.h.i.+ps cannot be absent from a compilation like the present. And naturally the poets to be exhibited in it will be a.s.signed to those persons for exhibition who are known to prize them highly, rather than to those who have no special inclination towards them. Moreover the very occupation with an author, and the business of exhibiting him, disposes us to affirm and amplify his importance. In the present work, therefore, we are sure of frequent temptation to adopt the historic estimate, or the personal estimate, and to forget the real estimate; which latter, nevertheless, we must employ if we are to make poetry yield us its full benefit. So high is that benefit, the benefit of clearly feeling and of deeply enjoying the really excellent, the truly cla.s.sic in poetry, that we do well, I say, to set it fixedly before our minds as our object in studying poets and poetry, and to make the desire of attaining it the one principle to which, as the _Imitation_ says, whatever we may read or come to know, we always return. _c.u.m multa legeris et cognoveris, ad unum semper oportet redire principium._[71]

The historic estimate is likely in especial to affect our judgment and our language when we are dealing with ancient poets; the personal estimate when we are dealing with poets our contemporaries, or at any rate modern. The exaggerations due to the historic estimate are not in themselves, perhaps, of very much gravity. Their report hardly enters the general ear; probably they do not always impose even on the literary men who adopt them. But they lead to a dangerous abuse of language. So we hear Caedmon,[72] amongst, our own poets, compared to Milton. I have already noticed the enthusiasm of one accomplished French critic for "historic origins." Another eminent French critic, M. Vitet,[73]

comments upon that famous doc.u.ment of the early poetry of his nation, the _Chanson de Roland._[74] It is indeed a most interesting doc.u.ment.

The _joculator_ or _jongleur_ Taillefer, who was with William the Conqueror's army at Hastings, marched before the Norman troops, so said the tradition, singing "of Charlemagne and of Roland and of Oliver, and of the va.s.sals who died at Roncevaux"; and it is suggested that in the _Chanson de Roland_ by one Turoldus or Theroulde, a poem preserved in a ma.n.u.script of the twelfth century in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, we have certainly the matter, perhaps even some of the words, of the chant which Taillefer sang. The poem has vigor and freshness; it is not without pathos. But M. Vitet is not satisfied with seeing in it a doc.u.ment of some poetic value, and of very high historic and linguistic value; he sees in it a grand and beautiful work, a monument of epic genius. In its general design he finds the grandiose conception, in its details he finds the constant union of simplicity with greatness, which are the marks, he truly says, of the genuine epic, and distinguish it from the artificial epic of literary ages. One thinks of Homer; this is the sort of praise which is given to Homer, and justly given. Higher praise there cannot well be, and it is the praise due to epic poetry of the highest order only, and to no other. Let us try, then, the _Chanson de Roland_ at its best. Roland, mortally wounded, lays himself down under a pine-tree, with his face turned towards Spain and the enemy--

"De plusurs choses a remembrer li prist, De tantes teres c.u.me li bers cunquist, De dulce France, des humes de sun lign, De Carlemagne sun seignor ki l'nurrit."[75]

That is primitive work, I repeat, with an undeniable poetic quality of its own. It deserves such praise, and such praise is sufficient for it.

But now turn to Homer--

[Greek: Os phato tous d aedae katecheu phusizoos aia en Lakedaimoni authi, philm en patridi gaim][76]

We are here in another world, another order of poetry altogether; here is rightly due such supreme praise as that which M. Vitet gives to the _Chanson de Roland_. If our words are to have any meaning, if our judgments are to have any solidity, we must not heap that supreme praise upon poetry of an order immeasurably inferior.

Indeed there can be no more useful help for discovering what poetry belongs to the cla.s.s of the truly excellent, and can therefore do us most good, than to have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a touchstone to other poetry. Of course we are not to require this other poetry to resemble them; it may be very dissimilar. But if we have any tact we shall find them, when we have lodged them well in our minds, an infallible touchstone for detecting the presence or absence of high poetic quality, and also the degree of this quality, in all other poetry which we may place beside them. Short pa.s.sages, even single lines, will serve our turn quite sufficiently. Take the two lines which I have just quoted from Homer, the poet's comment on Helen's mention of her brothers;--or take his

[Greek:]

A delo, to sphoi domen Paelaei anakti Thnaeta; umeis d eston agaero t athanato te.

ae ina dustaenoiosi met andrasin alge echaeton;[77]

the address of Zeus to the horses of Peleus;--or take finally his

[Greek:]

Kai se, geron, to prin men akouomen olbion einar[78]

the words of Achilles to Priam, a suppliant before him. Take that incomparable line and a half of Dante, Ugolino's tremendous words--

"Io no piangeva; s dentro impietrai.

Piangevan elli ..."[79]

take the lovely words of Beatrice to Virgil--

"Io son fatta da Dio, sua merce, tale, Che la vostra miseria non mi tange, Ne fiamma d'esto incendio non m'a.s.sale ..."[80]

take the simple, but perfect, single line--

"In la sua volontade e nostra pace."[81]

Take of Shakespeare a line or two of Henry the Fourth's expostulation with sleep--

"Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast Seal up the s.h.i.+p-boy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge ..."[82]

and take, as well, Hamlet's dying request to Horatio--

"If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain To tell my story ..."[83]

Take of Milton that Miltonic pa.s.sage--

"Darken'd so, yet shone Above them all the archangel; but his face Deep scars of thunder had intrench'd, and care Sat on his faded cheek ..."[84]

add two such lines as--

"And courage never to submit or yield And what is else not to be overcome ..."[85]

and finish with the exquisite close to the loss of Proserpine, the loss

" ... which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world."[86]

These few lines, if we have tact and can use them, are enough even of themselves to keep clear and sound our judgments about poetry, to save us from fallacious estimates of it, to conduct us to a real estimate.

The specimens I have quoted differ widely from one another, but they have in common this: the possession of the very highest poetical quality. If we are thoroughly penetrated by their power, we shall find that we have acquired a sense enabling us, whatever poetry may be laid before us, to feel the degree in which a high poetical quality is present or wanting there. Critics give themselves great labor to draw out what in the abstract const.i.tutes the characters of a high quality of poetry. It is much better simply to have recourse to concrete examples; --to take specimens of poetry of the high, the very highest quality, and to say: The characters of a high quality of poetry are what is expressed _there_. They are far better recognized by being felt in the verse of the master, than by being perused in the prose of the critic.

Nevertheless if we are urgently pressed to give some critical account of them, we may safely, perhaps, venture on laying down, not indeed how and why the characters arise, but where and in what they arise. They are in the matter and substance of the poetry, and they are in its manner and style. Both of these, the substance and matter on the one hand, the style and manner on the other, have a mark, an accent, of high beauty, worth, and power. But if we are asked to define this mark and accent in the abstract, our answer must be: No, for we should thereby be darkening the question, not clearing it. The mark and accent are as given by the substance and matter of that poetry, by the style and manner of that poetry, and of all other poetry which is akin to it in quality.

Only one thing we may add as to the substance and matter of poetry, guiding ourselves by Aristotle's profound observation[87] that the superiority of poetry over history consists in its possessing a higher truth and a higher seriousness ([Greek: philosophoteron kahi spondaioteron]). Let us add, therefore, to what we have said, this: that the substance and matter of the best poetry acquire their special character from possessing, in an eminent degree, truth and seriousness.

We may add yet further, what is in itself evident, that to the style and manner of the best poetry their special character, their accent, is given by their diction, and, even yet more, by their movement. And though we distinguish between the two characters, the two accents, of superiority, yet they are nevertheless vitally connected one with the other. The superior character of truth and seriousness, in the matter and substance of the best poetry, is inseparable from the superiority of diction and movement marking its style and manner. The two superiorities are closely related, and are in steadfast proportion one to the other.

So far as high poetic truth and seriousness are wanting to a poet's matter and substance, so far also, we may be sure, will a high poetic stamp of diction and movement be wanting to his style and manner. In proportion as this high stamp of diction and movement, again, is absent from a poet's style and manner, we shall find, also, that high poetic truth and seriousness are absent from his substance and matter.

So stated, these are but dry generalities; their whole force lies in their application. And I could wish every student of poetry to make the application of them for himself. Made by himself, the application would impress itself upon his mind far more deeply than made by me. Neither will my limits allow me to make any full application of the generalities above propounded; but in the hope of bringing out, at any rate, some significance in them, and of establis.h.i.+ng an important principle more firmly by their means, I will, in the s.p.a.ce which remains to me, follow rapidly from the commencement the course of our English poetry with them in my view.

Once more I return to the early poetry of France, with which our own poetry, in its origins, is indissolubly connected. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, that seed-time of all modern language and literature, the poetry of France had a clear predominance in Europe. Of the two divisions of that poetry, its productions in the _langue d'ol_ and its productions in the _langue d'oc_, the poetry of the _langue d'oc_,[88] of southern France, of the troubadours, is of importance because of its effect on Italian literature;--the first literature of modern Europe to strike the true and grand note, and to bring forth, as in Dante and Petrarch it brought forth, cla.s.sics. But the predominance of French poetry in Europe, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, is due to its poetry of the _langue d'ol_, the poetry of northern France and of the tongue which is now the French language. In the twelfth century the bloom of this romance-poetry was earlier and stronger in England, at the court of our Anglo-Norman kings, than in France itself. But it was a bloom of French poetry; and as our native poetry formed itself, it formed itself out of this. The romance-poems which took possession of the heart and imagination of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are French; "they are," as Southey justly says, "the pride of French literature, nor have we anything which can be placed in compet.i.tion with them." Themes were supplied from all quarters: but the romance-setting which was common to them all, and which gained the ear of Europe, was French. This const.i.tuted for the French poetry, literature, and language, at the height of the Middle Age, an unchallenged predominance. The Italian Brunetto Latini,[89] the master of Dante, wrote his _Treasure_ in French because, he says, "la parleure en est plus delitable et plus commune a toutes gens." In the same century, the thirteenth, the French romance-writer, Christian of Troyes,[90] formulates the claims, in chivalry and letters, of France, his native country, as follows:--

"Or vous ert par ce livre apris, Que Gresse ot de chevalerie Le premier los et de clergie; Puis vint chevalerie a Rome, Et de la clergie la some, Qui ore est en France venue.

Diex doinst qu'ele i soit retenue Et que li lius li abelisse Tant que de France n'isse L'onor qui s'i est arestee!"

"Now by this book you will learn that first Greece had the renown for chivalry and letters: then chivalry and the primacy in letters pa.s.sed to Rome, and now it is come to France. G.o.d grant it may be kept there; and that the place may please it so well, that the honor which has come to make stay in France may never depart thence!"

Yet it is now all gone, this French romance-poetry, of which the weight of substance and the power of style are not unfairly represented by this extract from Christian of Troyes. Only by means of the historic estimate can we persuade ourselves now to think that any of it is of poetical importance.

But in the fourteenth century there comes an Englishman nourished on this poetry; taught his trade by this poetry, getting words, rhyme, meter from this poetry; for even of that stanza[91] which the Italians used, and which Chaucer derived immediately from the Italians, the basis and suggestion was probably given in France. Chaucer (I have already named him) fascinated his contemporaries, but so too did Christian of Troyes and Wolfram of Eschenbach.[92] Chaucer's power of fascination, however, is enduring; his poetical importance does not need the a.s.sistance of the historic estimate; it is real. He is a genuine source of joy and strength, which is flowing still for us and will flow always.

He will be read, as time goes on, far more generally than he is read now. His language is a cause of difficulty for us; but so also, and I think in quite as great a degree, is the language of Burns. In Chaucer's case, as in that of Burns, it is a difficulty to be unhesitatingly accepted and overcome.

If we ask ourselves wherein consists the immense superiority of Chaucer's poetry over the romance-poetry--why it is that in pa.s.sing from this to Chaucer we suddenly feel ourselves to be in another world, we shall find that his superiority is both in the substance of his poetry and in the style of his poetry. His superiority in substance is given by his large, free, simple, clear yet kindly view of human life,--so unlike the total want, in the romance-poets, of all intelligent command of it.

Chaucer has not their helplessness; he has gained the power to survey the world from a central, a truly human point of view. We have only to call to mind the Prologue to _The Canterbury Tales_. The right comment upon it is Dryden's: "It is sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that _here is G.o.d's plenty_."[93] And again: "He is a perpetual fountain of good sense." It is by a large, free, sound representation of things, that poetry, this high criticism of life, has truth of substance; and Chaucer's poetry has truth of substance.

Of his style and manner, if we think first of the romance-poetry and then of Chaucer's divine liquidness of diction, his divine fluidity of movement, it is difficult to speak temperately. They are irresistible, and justify all the rapture with which his successors speak of his "gold dew-drops of speech." Johnson misses the point entirely when he finds fault with Dryden for ascribing to Chaucer the first refinement of our numbers, and says that Gower[94] also can show smooth numbers and easy rhymes. The refinement of our numbers means something far more than this. A nation may have versifiers with smooth numbers and easy rhymes, and yet may have no real poetry at all. Chaucer is the father of our splendid English poetry; he is our "well of English undefiled," because by the lovely charm of his diction, the lovely charm of his movement, he makes an epoch and founds a tradition.

In Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, we can follow the tradition of the liquid diction, the fluid movement, of Chaucer; at one time it is his liquid diction of which in these poets we feel the virtue, and at another time it is his fluid movement. And the virtue is irresistible.